Atheists have often admitted that their claimed concern for the free choice and free thought of children is a front for attempting to convert them to atheism.
They also admit to writing atheism propaganda in the guise of children’s “fiction” (evidenced here and here and much, much more here).
Let us take a trek down memory lane, two years to be exact, and revisit Sam Harris’ media campaign to condemn theism and promulgate atheism.
It was two years ago today, Sergeant Harris taught the band to play. They were certainly in style, And they’re guaranteed to raise some ire, So may I introduce to you, The act you’ve known for the past few years,
Sergeant Harris Atheist Media Campaign.
Certainly, the New Atheists are very media savvy and can get an interview or lecture and publish a book or article at will. However, what is in view is not an out in the open campaign such as Richard Dawkins’ “Out” campaign whereby he target the youth by urging college students—who have overactive libidos, are naturally rebellious and have just left home to live in co-ed dorms—to reject “religion” and traditional morality: seriously, how difficult is that to accomplish? Sam Harris’ two years old campaign is taking place behind closed doors and undercover.
Let us begin with the end game and then consider part of the pathway that got us to the conclusion. Sam Harris is certainly not shy about his goals:
making religious certitude look stupid will be exploited, and we’ll start laughing at people who believe…We’ll laugh at them in a way that will be synonymous with excluding them from our halls of power.[1]
And this is Sam Harris in a good mood; consider his support of capital punishment for thought crime,
Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.[2]
Who will administer that death panel?
Here is the manner in which the campaign is being played out behind the scenes, as Sam Harris states:
I think the criticism of irrationality just has to come from 100 sides all at once. In the entertainment community, maybe you’ll just have people making jokes that are funny enough and true enough so as to put religious certainty in a bad light… I’m hopeful that journalists and people in the entertainment industry are waiting for the permission to express their doubts, and I think that permission is coming. I mean I’m trying to do what I can to engineer it in my hardheaded and boorish way.
And I feel, just from the contacts I have in both industries, that there’s a profound sense of relief that comes with hearing somebody call a spade a spade.[3]
I am actually not certain against what he is fighting. Name one TV show that is premised upon, or merely occasionally exhibits, or ever characterizes traditional and or “religious”/Christian morals. I constantly notice amorality and immorality particularly related to sexuality. There are entire TV show that are premised upon treating people as what atheism/secularism/Darwinism tells us we are: mere bio-organic animals who treat each other as the flavor of the week (I used to play a game whilst channel surfing: I would turn it to “Two and a Half Men” and count the seconds before a sexual reference was made—mere seconds). TV shows are saturated with besmirchments of “religion” and praise of secularism. Consider the Simpsons episode in which the baby took an IQ test and got a good score, “Not bad, for a Christian,” was the punchline. On the TV show “Supernatural” angels claim that only four angels have seen God and the rest, frustratingly, take God existence on “faith.” Moreover, based on the “problem of evil” some angels claim that “God is dead” and other are looking around for Him.
Newsbusters reports:
Why does taxpayer-funded NPR, or anyone else for that matter, care what atheists like Sam Harris think? They are squarely in opposition to public opinion. According to a recent Zogby/American Bible Society poll, 84 percent of adults are not offended when they hear references to God or the Bible on network television shows, and 51 percent say entertainment networks should develop shows with positive messages – and even specifically refer to God and the Bible…
The Parents Television Council has completed its seventh study of the treatment of religion on prime-time network television, evaluating TV shows during the 2005-2006 season, and the numbers are stunning. From a quantitative standpoint, the total number of treatments of religion has been reduced by 50 percent in the past year alone. And when religion is part of the storyline, more often than not it is not a positive thing: television today regularly mocks the clergy, religious laity, church doctrines and religious institutions. Religious people are often portrayed as frauds or the world’s biggest sinners. NBC’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” featured a nun who kicked a black man in the face after calling him the N-word. ABC’s “Boston Legal” had the man who had sex with a cow protesting he was a church deacon. Or take an episode of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” where Gabi, one of the titled housewives, had sex with a teenage boy who told her, “Me and my friend Justin had this bet to see who could lose their virginity first this summer at Bible camp. Guess I beat him to the punch.” Why Bible camp? Why not? Then there was this disgusting plotline in a different episode. This same dreadful woman Gabi lied during confession, telling a priest that a certain nun was having an affair with her husband. After gloating at her success getting the nun transferred to Alaska, she slapped the nun, then pushed her into a rack of candles, setting her on fire. And you thought parish life was dull. Fox is now the Hollywood champion of God-mocking, the Atheist’s Favorite. The Sunday night cartoon block is a strong contributor, ridiculing God on what even the Fox folks must know — like, Sunday? — is His day. “The Family Guy” routinely mocks the sacred. One episode featured the teenaged son who discovers God looks like Angelina Jolie, and asks to “see your boobs.” “God” agrees, but warns him about the impressive “Rack of Infinite Wisdom.” In another episode, Jesus Christ is depicted as a teenager arguing with St. Joseph: “Up yours, Joseph! You’re not my real dad!” Jesus phones Heaven, where God the Father answers while lying in bed with a woman. God hangs up on Jesus and leers at the woman, who holds up a condom. God responds: “Oh, come on, baby. It’s my birthday.” In yet another episode, God is shown passing gas and lighting the gas on fire. The show’s father character explains that this is how God created the universe. When you look at these and so many other revolting examples, it becomes clear that a tiny atheist minority controls the creative cards in Hollywood. You think I exaggerate? Consider this study finding:Roughly six out of ten of the portrayals of religion on reality-based – which is to say, unscripted – TV shows were positive. That still doesn’t reflect public opinion, but it’s close. Unscripted shows were responsible for only 4.5 percent of the negative portrayals this study team found. The other 95.5 percent came from Hollywood’s professionals, who are at their most comfortable attacking that which you and I and most Americans hold sacred.[4]
Also, from the TV show “House”: Dr. House states, “Faith, that’s another for ignorance, isn’t it?… I fear for the human race. A teenager claims to be the voice of God and people with advanced degrees are listening.” From the TV show “Dawson’s Creek”: Jen Lindley states, “You know, I don’t do real well with church and the Bible and this prayer stuff…I don’t covet a religious god. Grams, I’m an atheist” when she is on her death bed she records a farewell message to her baby daughter in which she states, “The thing that I’ve come to realize sweetheart is that it just doesn’t matter if God exists or not. The important thing is for you to believe in something”—something? Anything?
These are mere drops in the bucket of industries, entertainment and journalism, that have been traditionally and consistently anti-traditional values. It is almost embarrassing providing so few examples, as chronicling these would be a very easy to accomplish full time job.
Thus, here is Sam Harris, the self-appointed social engineer, encouraging the public expression of prejudice via news and entertainment. But that is not all; Sam Harris is now a neuroscientist and now seeks to promulgate atheism with his authority as a scientist as he disguises atheism as science. He actually became a scientist in order to prove what he already believes to be true, he is not an unbiased researcher, he is using science as a tool by which to push his worldview. Before becoming a scientist he stated:
Once the neurology of belief becomes clear…religious faith will be exposed for what it is: a humble species of terrestrial credulity.
If we better understood the workings of the human brain, we would undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness, our modes of conduct, and the various ways we use our attention. If we ever develop such a science, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they now are to astronomers.[5]What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God—to the degree that they are really believed—are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else…What I do believe, however, is that the neural processes that govern the final acceptance of a statement as ‘true’ rely on more fundamental, reward-related circuitry in our frontal lobes—probably the same regions that judge the pleasantness of tastes and odors…Once the neurology of belief becomes clear, and it stands revealed as an all-purpose emotion arising in a wide variety of contexts (often without warrant), religious faith will be exposed for what it is: a humble species of terrestrial credulity. We will then have additional, scientific reasons to declare that mere feelings of conviction are not enough when it comes time to talk about the way the world is. The only thing that guarantees that (sufficiently complex) beliefs actually represent the world, are chains of evidence and argument linking them to the world…Understanding belief at the level of the brain may hold the key to new insights into the nature of our minds, to new rules of discourse, and to new frontiers of human cooperation.[6]
His studies, such as “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief” (which I reviewed here) are examples of his attempt to read his thought restricting worldview into his research.
Before considering the interview in which Sam Harris let the cat out of the atheist conspiracy bag; keep in mind that Harris’ true stroke of “genius” was what has ultimately become the premise upon which the—on the surface valiant but in reality cowardly—New Atheist movement functions. His insight was that religious moderates are to blame for the religious extremism against which the New Atheists were supposed to be responding in the first place (as the New Atheists collectively point to the USA attacks on 9/11 as the fire which ignited their movement).
Thus, they could, collectively, bypass the troublesome and dangerous business of, for example, traveling around Muslim countries giving interviews on Al Jezeera or lectures that besmirched Muhammad, the Qur′an and Allah. Rather, they chose to sit in the comfort, safely and lucrativeness of the UK and USA, countries founded upon Judeo-Christian values, and take on the world’s true source of evil: the Pope, the Bishop of Canterbury, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.
Harris says the only way to win is to keep up the pressure until religious tolerance is no longer tolerated.[7]
In this way, they could launch their media campaigns and become wealthy celebrities. No bothersome Al Qaeda, Talibani or otherwise Wahabist inspired mobs, no riots, no Salman Rushdie-like officially sentences of capital punishment. They do not bother with anyone who is more troublesome than an occasional Christian stating, “I will pray for you,” or “I disagree,” or “I will not buy that book,” or “Who cares?”—real danger, capiche?!?!
The interview in question states:
In response to the growing power of religious extremism, a small group of atheists has taken a new approach. Going on the offensive, they target the tolerant, with both reason – and ridicule…a fiery rhetorical blend of reason and ridicule, especially ridicule… Sam Harris concedes he’s on a mission to make moderates less moderate…Because moderates insist that we respect their religious faith, we can’t criticize the role that religious faith is playing in dividing people…
Gary Wolf wrote about the new atheists in Wired…He says the polemics of new atheism can be just as nasty as the fundamentalists. [Wolf states] So, while I don’t accuse the atheists of being fundamentalists, the rhetoric they use resonates with the religious rhetoric that controls much of our cultural debate today.
Again, what is the true evil again which Sam Harris rages? The examples in the interview consisted to those who hold that “the universe is 6,000 years old…Pat Robertson…The 700 Club,” etc. And what is one of the great concerns with Robertson? That he stated, “…atheism. I mean that’s their religion.” First, tell atheist activists such as Michel Newdow to stop claiming that atheism is a religion and then you can get around to criticizing Robertson for merely agreeing.
In expressing his vision of the future Sam Harris states,
One day someone in the White House press corps will hear the president of the United States express some certainty about being in dialogue with the creator of the universe and he or she will ask a question which should be on everybody’s mind – you know, how is this any different from thinking you’re in dialogue with Zeus?
What if one day someone in the White House press corps will hear the president of the United States expressing some certainty about the universe and absolutely everything in it being an accident and that humans are nothing but glorified animals that came to be when lightning struck a swamps and life came from non-life and that morality is arbitrarily based on personal preferences?
Hopefully the White House press corps will be more informed than Sam Harris and know that correlating “the creator of the universe” with Zeus demonstrates an even basic lack of knowledge of natural theology.
Thus, we have considered more evidence of what lays beneath the surface of even the most generic atheist bus ads, billboards and all sorts of media outlets and forums—pushing a pro-atheism and anti-theism agenda whether openly or hidden.
[1] Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
[2] Sam Harris, The End of Faith—Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), pp. 52–53
[3] Brooke Gladstone, “Atheist Brigade Takes Arguments to the Tolerant,” NPR, December 15, 2006
[4] Brent Bozell, “God, Hollywood’s Four-Letter Word,” Newsbusters, December 30, 2006
[5] Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
[6] Edge – The World Question Center, “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”
[7] Brooke Gladstone, “Atheist Brigade Takes Arguments to the Tolerant,” NPR, December 15, 2006